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October 01, 2012

חג שמח / Happy Sukkot!

Our sukkah, 5773.

There are four days between Yom Kippur and Sukkot. One for each letter of the Tetragrammaton, the Divine Name whose pronunciation is lost to us (or is perhaps, as Rabbi Arthur Waskow has suggested, our very breathing, in and out, each inhalation and exhalation together forming a prayer.) One for each of the Four Worlds.

Four days to process whatever emotional and spiritual learning Yom Kippur brought us. To install on our hearts the new name of God we downloaded during that long day of fasting and prayer. Four days to recover from the rollercoaster of the Days of Awe. To make ourselves into channels for the blessing with which we hope to irrigate the world during the festival to come.

And then, at sundown after the fourth day, we enter Sukkot. Chag ha-asif, the festival of ingathering. Zman simchateinu, the season of our rejoicing. A week of dwelling consciously in impermanence, beneath the sheltering divine presence and the shelter of the ever-changing sky. A week of dining al fresco, welcoming our spiritual ancestors and our friends to join us.

During Sukkot, the immanent divine Presence dwells with us in our temporary backyard houses. God moves in with us, this week, and we move in with God. We shake the Four Species in all directions, beckoning blessing.

Even though autumn in New England can be cold and rainy, there's something glorious about being outside in the fall. I love this chance to encounter God's presence in the great outdoors before winter's cold drives me mostly inside.

And I love all the various interpretations of the holiday: that our sukkot represent harvest huts, that they represent the tents in which we dwelled when we left Egypt (or the clouds of divine glory which enveloped us on that journey), even that they're an annual return to the divine womb. Sukkot are liminal spaces, at once "inside" and "outside."

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חג שמח / Happy Sukkot!

Our sukkah, 5773.

There are four days between Yom Kippur and Sukkot. One for each letter of the Tetragrammaton, the Divine Name whose pronunciation is lost to us (or is perhaps, as Rabbi Arthur Waskow has suggested, our very breathing, in and out, each inhalation and exhalation together forming a prayer.) One for each of the Four Worlds.

Four days to process whatever emotional and spiritual learning Yom Kippur brought us. To install on our hearts the new name of God we downloaded during that long day of fasting and prayer. Four days to recover from the rollercoaster of the Days of Awe. To make ourselves into channels for the blessing with which we hope to irrigate the world during the festival to come.

And then, at sundown after the fourth day, we enter Sukkot. Chag ha-asif, the festival of ingathering. Zman simchateinu, the season of our rejoicing. A week of dwelling consciously in impermanence, beneath the sheltering divine presence and the shelter of the ever-changing sky. A week of dining al fresco, welcoming our spiritual ancestors and our friends to join us.

During Sukkot, the immanent divine Presence dwells with us in our temporary backyard houses. God moves in with us, this week, and we move in with God. We shake the Four Species in all directions, beckoning blessing.

Even though autumn in New England can be cold and rainy, there's something glorious about being outside in the fall. I love this chance to encounter God's presence in the great outdoors before winter's cold drives me mostly inside.

And I love all the various interpretations of the holiday: that our sukkot represent harvest huts, that they represent the tents in which we dwelled when we left Egypt (or the clouds of divine glory which enveloped us on that journey), even that they're an annual return to the divine womb. Sukkot are liminal spaces, at once "inside" and "outside."